TREATY TALKS FAIL TO FIND CONSENSUS IN GLOBAL WARMING

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Published: November 26, 2000

THE HAGUE, Nov. 25—
High-stakes negotiations aimed at finishing a treaty to curb global warming collapsed today after a tense all-night bargaining session foundered on last-minute disputes between European and American negotiators.

The breakdown, after two weeks of intensive talks here, stunned many participants, environmental groups and observers, even though they had recognized from the start the enormous task of finding common ground on ways to cut the greenhouse gases emitted by every smokestack and tailpipe from Boston to Brisbane.

''I'm gutted,'' John Prescott, Britain's deputy prime minister, said as he left the hall this morning after failing to negotiate a compromise primarily between the United States -- by far the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases -- and the European Union.

But Jan Pronk, the conference president and Dutch environment minister, did not concede defeat, and instead proposed that the meeting be suspended, with another session perhaps as soon as May.

The top American negotiator, Frank E. Loy, visibly tired and rubbing his forehead and eyes, agreed that the effort should continue, even when he and the Clinton administration would be handing over the task to a new administration.

From the outset the talks were riven by conflicting agendas as they aimed to fill in the fine print of a 1997 treaty, called the Kyoto Protocol, drafted by more than 170 countries.

Poor countries sought billions of dollars to help them adapt to climate change, while rich nations aimed to blunt the economic impact of the treaty by finding the least costly ways to cut their emissions of warming gases.

But today the failure came down to persistent disagreement between industrial powers on opposite sides of the Atlantic over the role of trees and properly managed farmland in acting as ''sinks'' to absorb carbon dioxide, the dominant greenhouse gas.

The lack of understanding on that issue was a key to the breakdown of the talks, participants on both sides said. European negotiators ultimately rejected a compromise proposal -- which early this morning seemed to have sealed a deal -- as too harmful to the environment and too favorable to the United States.

If enacted, the treaty the negotiators had hoped to complete would commit three dozen industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 to at least 5 percent below emissions in 1990.

So far, however, no industrialized country has ratified the pact, and as negotiations have dragged on in the intervening years, the emissions of most of the world's leading producers of greenhouse gases have only continued to rise, a trend that helped add new urgency to the current round of talks.

When the treaty was originally drafted in Japan three years ago, the United States, Canada and other large countries said they would seek credit toward their emissions targets for forested areas, but those talks never settled on an amount. Negotiators at the current conference had hoped to arrive at one.

But ultimately no agreement could be reached. Around 3 a.m., Mr. Prescott, from Britain, and representatives of two other European nations met with the United States team over a compromise proposal. Members of both delegations said agreement was reached in that room.

''We physically shooks hands,'' Mr. Loy said. ''I asked, 'Are we now in full agreement, is this a deal?' I was pointing to a piece of paper. They said, 'Yes.' ''

But when that set of proposals was brought back to the rest of the European delegation, they rejected it.

''We had a hard and fast political deal,'' said a member of the British delegation. But that deal could not hold up to the subsequent analysis before dawn by other European countries.

''I think it is fair to say that was a pretty important opportunity that was not cashed in on,'' Mr. Loy said.

Moments after word escaped that the agreement had broken down, representatives of competing private environmental groups sprinted around the halls, decrying the failure and saying simply, ''It's over.'' They then scrambled to hand out hastily drafted press releases and to hold briefings for the media shouting to be heard over the din and confusion.

Many environmental groups argued that the United States had underestimated the strength of the European Green movement and its determination to reduce the use of fossil fuels drastically. A British official said that many European countries realized the significance of the idea of carbon ''sinks'' only during the current meeting -- and that it was far too late.

Jennifer Morgan, climate campaign director for the World Wildlife Fund, which joined a mostly European cluster of environmental groups, blamed the United States.

''The United States pushed too hard and too far,'' she said. ''They didn't leave the time or trust to get a deal in the end.''

Part of the problem was a cultural rift, negotiators on both sides said. The European Union, where Green Party politics is a driving force, never found a way to compromise with the United States, where the environmental movement increasingly works with industries to bring change, instead of fighting for strict top-down regulations.

''It's extremely difficult to negotiate between groups where political cultures are so different,'' Dominique Voynet, the French environment minister and a Green Party member, told the full sessions.

Earlier in the week, Jurgen Trittin, the German environment minister, explained that the opposition to forest credits in his country was deeply rooted, and that there was a clear sense at the conference that the United States and its partners were trying to get something for nothing.

''We have strong interest groups in German society,'' he said. ''What shall I tell them if the United States makes a fire road in a forest and flies airplanes over it and says that is an emissions project? They'd say you're ridiculous.''

But some environmental groups that tend to work more closely with industry defended the American position, which focused on building a political consensus back in the United States by making sure that the agreement satisfied powerful industry and farming lobbies.

''In the long-term fight against global warming, we need every tool at our disposal,'' said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a Washington group. Ms. Claussen was formerly part of a Clinton administration team that negotiated agreements leading up to the Kyoto Protocol.

''If we take carbon sequestration and market mechanisms out of the equation, or bog them down with such overly restrictive rules that nobody uses them,'' she said, ''then we are limiting our ability to meet our environmental objectives.''

Sani Daura, Nigeria's environmental minister and a spokesman for a bloc of developing nations called the Group of 77 and China -- whose exemption from emissions targets had long been seen as the most likely source of an impasse -- said the conference had failed largely because of competing economic interests in wealthy countries.

''I hope all the parties have learned their lessons,'' he said. ''The breakdown came from selfishness and lack of political will, in particular from the North.''

Staff members for two American senators, one Democrat and one Republican, said all was not lost, however, despite the substantial setback. The Senate had strong reservations about the Kyoto Protocol even before it was negotiated in 1997. And now there was the prospect of a new push in Washington to curb greenhouse gases, they said.

''Regardless of the outcome here, the stage is set in Congress next year to consider addressing this issue in a way that makes economic and environmental sense in a coordinated fashion,'' one staff member said.

Photo: Protesters against greenhouse gases maintained a 20-hour vigil yesterday over a banner outside the climate treaty negotiations in The Hague. (Reuters)(pg. 24)